


It's Not The Waking, It's The Rising (Over Time)

by bluejoseph



Series: Hozier is nice [3]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Established Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pride, Pride Parades, Therapy, Tyler is bisexual, compulsory heterosexuality, getting better, josh is gay, progress - Freeform, self doubt, self hate, sounds really angsty but it's mostly soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18319664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejoseph/pseuds/bluejoseph
Summary: Josh has come a long way from his teens, but he isn't quite there yet. And that's okay.





	It's Not The Waking, It's The Rising (Over Time)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Nina Cried Power by Hozier, featuring Mavis Staples. Internalized homophobia and comp het are bastards, but beating them isn’t an overnight process. It’s okay to take baby steps, guys. I love you all.

The first sound Josh hears when he’s finally pulled from the gentle grip of sleep is cheering. It confuses him, for a moment, but then he remembers, and it brings the tiniest bit of softness to his heart.   
  
Cheering, and engines rumbling, and footsteps, and voices. Voices, calling out to one another; to friends, to family. None of them are calling to him.   
  
He keeps his eyes closed, reaches out blindly, and finds warmth; Tyler is there. Josh places an arm around his boyfriend carefully, not wanting to disturb him, but he hears Tyler yawn, and feels the bed shift as he stretches.   
  
Giving in and opening his eyes finds a similar pair of brown ones staring straight into him. Tyler smiles, moves closer, and they kiss, for just a few moments.   
  
“Sleep okay?” Tyler asks once they’ve separated their lips, using his own arm as a pillow and watching Josh’s face.   
  
He nods, hesitantly. There’s a pause before either one of them speaks.   
  
“Sounds like they’re getting started out there,” Tyler hums. His smile has softened a little with concern.   
  
Josh nods again. His boyfriend reaches out a hand to cast it through his natural brown curls. “We don’t have to get up, you know. It’s Saturday. We can stay in bed all day, if you want.”   
  
Tyler’s concern is reasonable, but Josh promised himself he’d get up to see the ruckus outside. “I’ll be alright. Besides, I don’t know if I can stay here kissing you all morning. Your breath is awful.”   
  
The other man scoffs, smiles, and presses a kiss to Josh’s forehead before climbing out of bed. He watches Tyler lazily as he pulls on a pair of jeans left discarded on the floor. “Coffee first, toothpaste second.”   
  
He leaves for the kitchen, then, and Josh is left alone with his thoughts. His thoughts, and the sounds of the crowd outside.   
  
He’s come a long way from his teens, he’ll admit that. Doubt and denial were his best friends, and they often came hand in hand. He’d faked some things and ignored others for so long that he had himself convinced that it was real.   
  
Josh has had an attraction to guys since junior high, but he was surrounded by so much hate and discrimination, that it was impossible for him to accept. He shoved it down into the deepest parts of him, he told himself it was fake, he downright ignored it for far too long.   
  
It wasn’t until after college that he started seeing a therapist. Her name is Debby, and she is kind and patient with him. When Josh said something negative about himself during their appointments, that his sexuality was wrong or disgusting, Debby would just gently correct him. “You _feel_ that it’s wrong or disgusting,” she would say. And over time, he learned to agree.   
  
Over time, he learned to distinguish what he felt from what was true. It took a lot of therapy, and tears, and long nights huddled up on the couch, struggling to sort through what he was really feeling and what he told himself he was feeling.   
  
But over time, he improved. He learned that his uncomfortable urge to be with a woman was compulsory, and that it wasn’t what he wanted at all.   
  
And then Tyler came along. Tyler, with his kind smile and his terrible jokes and his unending patience. Tyler had never had most of the problems Josh had growing up. Sure, sometimes he’d felt guilty or ashamed about his sexuality, but he was able to push through them on his own, or he’d seek out support from his friends.   
  
Josh had never been able to push through his feelings on his own, and he’d been too scared before to ask for support. After he started seeing Debby once a week, though, and even more so after he met Tyler, he slowly began to open up.   
  
Tyler had never had internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality on the scale that Josh had, but he was incredibly patient. When his love had some thoughts or feelings he wanted to share, Tyler would listen. When Josh doubted himself, Tyler would help show him that there was no reason to.   
  
He was just a shoulder to cry on, at first. Tyler was just some guy at Taco Bell that had a bisexual flag on the back of his denim jacket. Debby had told him to try to reach out to other people in his community, and so Josh had hesitantly asked if they could eat together.   
  
Eating together one time turned into eating together twice a week turned into staying over at one another’s apartments. Whenever Tyler was around, it was harder for Josh’s doubts about himself to crawl into the back of his mind. It was hard for any bad feelings to come around.   
  
Things are a lot better now. Debby decreased the number of their appointments to once every two weeks, and since Tyler moved in a few months ago, Josh is practically living in paradise. He can hold hands with Tyler in public now. He can talk about sexuality with other gay people. He can say the word ‘boyfriend’ without wanting to cry. He and Tyler even have a gay flag hanging on the wall, above their bed.   
  
Josh has come a long way from his teens, but he isn’t quite there yet.   
  
“Dear, the coffee’s done!”   
  
At Tyler’s call, Josh finally gets up. He sits on the edge of the bed for a few moments longer, taking a few slow, steady breaths before going out into the kitchen.   
  
Tyler is humming a song from the radio as he fills a cup of coffee for his boyfriend, and then himself. Josh goes to him, wrapping his arms around his waist and nestling his head into his shoulder. Tyler hums a little softer in approval.   
  
“There’s still time,” Josh mumbles into his skin, “if you wanna go without me. I don’t want to hold you back.”   
  
Tyler turns around in Josh’s grasp, cupping his chin in his hand. “I told you, darling, I’m fine waiting until you’re ready; it wouldn’t be near as fun without you. Besides,” he adds, stroking Josh’s jawline with his thumb, “I’ve been to a dozen parades before, and as enjoyable as they are, they’re also exhausting. I could stand to miss one.”   
  
They get their coffee--after extracting a few kisses from one another--and at last, they go out onto the balcony together.   
  
The change is immediate. All the cheers from before are much louder outside, and it makes Josh just a little nervous. Tyler seems to notice this, though, and he grasps his boyfriend’s hand to help ground him. Below them, on the streets, is a pride parade.   
  
Josh sees a butch holding hands and laughing with her femme girlfriend while they take a picture next to a stop sign. There’s a nonbinary person wearing a binder and walking their dog, who’s wearing a little gay flag bandana around his neck. A trans woman carries a sign with a pink, blue, and white fist on it, and a tall man with a pansexual flag walks beside her.   
  
All of these people are like Josh, maybe more than he realizes. It doesn’t matter if he’s not ready to join them in their loud and brilliant pride; he’s still one of them. It’s just who he is, and he knows that now.   
  
There’s a boy near the edge of the crowd, almost on the sidewalk in front of the apartment. He’s a teenager, with curly brown hair and a pair of glasses similar to Josh’s own. A gay flag is tossed loosely over his shoulders, and he’s holding hands with his grinning boyfriend.   
  
Josh sees this boy, and he is overcome with something. He is not jealous that he wasn’t ready at that age, he isn’t filled with sadness or guilt.   
  
He’s filled with pride.   
  
The boy looks up, suddenly, and squints up at the balcony. As if by some miracle, he sees Josh and Tyler--pajama-clad, holding hands, and watching the parade below.   
  
He waves.   
  
Josh’s heart warms, and a smile rises on his face. He raises his hand. He waves back.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not the song, it is the singing  
> It's the herald of a human spirit, ringing  
> It is the bringing of the line  
> It is the bearing of the rhyme  
> It's not the waking, it's the rising


End file.
